A Few Updates and 12 Days of Blogging

We have a couple of exciting updates to share as we wrap up 2012!

And, you should know, we have big plans to make 2013 the biggest edublogging year yet.

Before we get to the new toys to play with, check out this excellent video from Mr. Avery’s Classroom Blog as his students share their “12 Days of Blogging”.

Here is their list :

  1. friends around the world
  2. mystery skypes
  3. 3 Eddie Nominations
  4. 4KM and 4KJ
  5. math movies
  6. projects funded (from DonorsChoose.org)
  7. students blogging
  8. collaborative projects
  9. students commenting
  10. google maps
  11. new posts
  12. clustrmap hits

A huge thanks to Mr. Avery’s class for such excellent examples of student blogging and allowing us to share your work here!

Let It Snow Plugin

The popular ‘Let It Snow Plugin’ is now back and better than ever. On all blogs, just go to the Plugins menu, click Activate and watch the snow fall on your blog!

Email Subscription

One of the most useful features available is the ability to let parents, students, and visitors signup to get email notifications of all new posts on a blog.

All you have to do is go to Appearance > Widgets and add the Email Subscription widget to a sidebar to set it up.

And as of today, you can now see a list of all those that have subscribed, export a list of subscribers, and delete subscribers when needed.

This is just the beginning of better user and subscriber management tools we have in the works. :)

Happy Holidays!

From all of us here at Edublogs, we wish you, your students, and families a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and an excellent New Year!

Check out the new DOGO news, books, and movies widgets!

The good folks at DOGOnews have created a new plugin which is now available on all Edublogs!

The plugin makes three snazzy widgets available which you can use to display the latest kid-friendly news and current events, book reviews, and movie reviews right in your sidebar.

Many of our users are using content from Dogo as blog post topics and other assignments. Hopefully these new widgets will help spark ideas and foster even more discussions.

How do I get the plugin?

It’s easy :)

  1. Login to your blog’s dashboard
  2. Click on ‘Plugins‘ on the left side of your dashboard
  3. Find the ‘DOGO Content Widget’ plugin and click ‘Activate
  4. Go to ‘Appearance‘ > ‘Widgets‘ and move the new DOGO widgets over to your sidebar of choice
That’s it!
Pretty cool, huh?

 

Announcing NEW Unlimited Student Blogs, Better Class Management, and More!

 

We are thrilled to announce some big changes and improvements to Edublogs!

Our focus this summer is to raise the bar in what we offer so that we continue to be the best blogging, ePortolio, and class website service for teachers and students around the world.

To help us reach this goal, we start by bringing you…

Unlimited Student Blogs!

Previously, each Pro account could only enable extra features on up to 50 student blogs. But we know many teachers can have well over 100 students at any given time.

Student blogs will be able to access premium themes, use our new iOS mobile app, embed videos and other code, and the full range of privacy options.

In addition, students will be able to fully manage the look and feel of their blogs, but won’t be able to change the privacy and moderation settings you set for them.

The NEW ‘My Class’ Feature

This is the big one. Now that you can have unlimited students on Edublogs, you need a good way to manage them all!

You will find a new ‘My Class’ menu item near the top of your blog’s dashboard.

From here you can manage the privacy and moderation settings on all student blogs, get a list of pending comments and posts, and more.

As soon as a student blog is added to a class, it will automatically have the extra features enabled as discussed above.

This is just the first launch – so expect improvements and additions in the coming months!

Better Help & Support

You’ll find a brand new ‘Help & Support‘ menu item in your dashboard with quick links to our user guides and support posts.

There’s also an easier to find link for our Pro users to email questions directly to our support staff.

New Theme Customizer

Go to Appearance > Themes and check out the new ‘Customize‘ link.

From here you can quickly edit the look and feel of your blog’s title, background, and custom images and see how it looks live in real time. This addition is just plain fun to play with :)

And Tons More…

There are lots of other new features and changes you may notice. For example:

  • An improved and simplified image and media uploader
  • A fresh new look to the dashboard and top admin bar
  • Flyout menus that keep the menu items nice and neat
  • Better usability on tablets and mobile devices (no app needed!)
  • An improved ‘Inactive Widgets‘ area to save widgets and so widgets don’t get lost when changing themes
  • Embed tweets into any post by just pasting in the link
  • Behind the scenes changes to improve speed

All of this is available now on Edublogs.org and will be coming soon to our Edublogs Campus networks.

Leave a comment below or contact us with any feedback or questions you may have.

Happy blogging!

Introducing the Official Edublogs iPad and iPhone Apps!

It’s here!

Kicking off what is shaping up to be the biggest summer in Edublogs’ history, we’re proud to unveil our brand new official iOS app.

Get it now in the App Store!

From the iPhone and iPad, Edublogs Pro, upgraded, and Campus bloggers can sign in, write posts, upload photos, manage comments, and more with ease!

We’ll whet your appetite with a few screenshots below.

And don’t worry Android users – we certainly haven’t forgot about you ;)

Happy mobile blogging!

iPhone Login Screen

 

iPhone Post Editor

 

Editing comments on the iPad

New Feature! Easy Password Protect Your Entire Blog

We have always had many different privacy options available to our bloggers – blogs can be as public or as private as you’d like.

Until now, if you wanted your blog to be private so that only a certain group of people could see it, you had to create and add usernames for each individual to your blog.

In short, it was kind of a pain.

Now you can quickly set a single password for your entire blog which you can give out to anyone you want to allow access.

This might be great for a group of student blogs that can all share the same password, meaning every student won’t need to be added to every single blog.

Or, it could work well on blogs meant for private communication or collaboration in a group, club, or school.

How does it work?!

First, go to the Settings > Privacy page of your blog.

Choose the last option on the list.

Enter any password you want and click ‘Save Changes’.

That’s it!

Now when anyone visits your blog, they will see this notice:

It is important to note that users can also choose to login with their Edublogs username and if they are registered users on the blog, they will have access that way as well.

Check it out now and let us know what you think!

The new password protect option is available on all Pro and upgraded student blogs now, and it will be rolling out to our Edublogs Campus networks soon.

Fun NEW Facts About Your Edublogs URL

Whenever you first create a blog here on edublogs.org you are given a brand new URL, or link, for your site.

For example, studentchallenge.edublogs.org is the URL for the Student Blogging Challenge blog.

As of today, you can also access the same site using studentchallenge.edublogs.com – see what we did there?

Even though the .org ending is the real URL (and the one you should use and give out to people), the .com ending will now work!

This will especially come in handy when giving out class blog links to students and parents that can forget or get the URL mixed-up.

Other Fun URL Facts

  • We see lots of users that out of habit, put a www. at the beginning of their URL. And while that will work too, it makes your link longer than it needs to be. Leave the www off! :)
  • You can use domain mapping to change your URL to any available domain on the web. For example, theedublogger.edublogs.org is domain mapped to theedublogger.com – which is much shorter and easier to remember!
  • You can have an unlimited number of blogs, all with different URLs, with your one username. Just go to the “My Blogs” page in your dashboard to create new ones or manage the ones you already have.

Happy blogging!

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